


Timelines

by dancingbeetle



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Captain Swan - Freeform, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancingbeetle/pseuds/dancingbeetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Emma's 30th birthday party, she and Hook take a walk and talk about birthdays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Timelines

_October 22_

Emma’s thirtieth birthday party had been, all things considered, a success.

She had protested against a big celebration, but her mother had insisted, and if she was honest, Emma didn’t mind finally having people around who wanted to celebrate with her. They’d compromised on a small gathering at Granny’s: spaghetti and drinks with Henry, her parents, Regina, a few others.

Henry and Mary Margaret had collaborated on a homemade banner that said HAPPY BiRTHDAY EMMA in large red letters (her mother had confessed, laughing, that the ‘I’ was so small because they had misspelled ‘birthday’ in their excitement and been forced to cram it in between the ‘B’ and ‘R’). There was chocolate cake with cinnamon frosting and a small pile of presents with her name on every one of them.

Hook had slipped in quietly after everyone else had already arrived, accepting David’s manly shoulder clap with a duck of his head and stationing himself in a booth towards the back of the diner along with several dwarves. She’d caught his eye across the room and smiled, and he’d sent a wink toward her that lodged, fluttering, somewhere under her ribcage.

She wasn’t sure what she felt for him, but whatever it was, it had been  _fluttering_  a lot more than usual lately, she realized, leaning against the counter and pensively spooning up tomato sauce. The pirate had been keeping his distance for a while, no doubt giving her the space he thought she needed to “make her choice.” Emma was surprised to find she missed him; not his pining (whatever Regina might say), but his jokes, his smiles, the reassuring solidness of him, and of his faith in her.

“Too bad Neal couldn’t be here for your party,” said her father, resting one elbow on the counter next to her and breaking her reverie.

“Hm? Neal’s not here?” she said, looking around in confusion.

“No, he had to go to New York, remember – some important thing he had to do for Gold?” David looked at her. “You didn’t even notice he’s gone, did you?”

“I guess not,” she said sheepishly. “I, uh, suppose I got a little overwhelmed. By the party.”

“Uh huh,” he said, and glanced across the room at Hook, who appeared to be thumb-wrestling Sleepy for the last meatball. Emma’s cheeks colored. “Oh, sweetheart,” her father said fondly, slinging an arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her temple. “Happy birthday.”

A little while later the whole group sang to her, and their smiling faces went straight to her heart and rose up as a lump in her throat. She hugged Henry, tears in her eyes, and excused herself to the bathroom while Mary Margaret cut the cake. A few deep breaths, a splash of cool water, and she went to rejoin the group – only to see Hook in the hallway.

“All right, love?” he asked quietly, concern in his voice.

“Yeah!” she replied, a bit too brightly. “Just needed to… step out for a second.”

“I understand. Just wanted to make sure, lass.”

“Thanks.” She smiled and made to head back to the party.

“Emma –” he called after her, and she turned to look back at him. “I know it can be overwhelming – all that.” He waved toward the roomful of people. “If you ever need… well. Just ask. I’m there.”

She recognized his stumbling invitation to talk for what he was really trying to say. _Sometimes it’s too much, isn’t it?_  his eyes asked.  _Sometimes you need someone you can simply be alone with._

“I know,” she said. “Thank you, Hook.”

He nodded, and their eyes held each other for a heartbeat too long to be friendly (something fluttered again, in her stomach this time) before she turned and went back to her family.

An hour or two later, Henry was practically falling asleep in his bowl of melted ice cream, and her parents volunteered to bring him home so Emma could “keep enjoying her party.” Mary Margaret paused on the way out to give her daughter one last hug.

“Happy birthday, dearheart,” she said. “I know this year will be the best one yet.”

“Oh yeah?” said Emma with a smile. “How do you figure?”

“Oh… call it mother’s intuition,” her mother replied, tapping her forehead. “See you later.”

The bell above the door jingled as David and Mary Margaret herded their sleepy grandson out to the truck, and Emma turned to look around the diner. There wasn’t much party left to enjoy – apart from Grumpy and Doc racing to the bottom of their pints, practically the only other person left at Granny’s was Hook.

 _Well, what the hell_ , Emma said to herself, and sat down next to him at the counter.

“Lovely party, Swan,” he said casually, and took a pull of his beer. “I’m quite partial to that noodle dish of Granny’s. I’ll have to ask her for the recipe.”

“You cook?” she asked, eyebrow raised.

“When I have to. Most fine dining establishments back home frowned somewhat on serving a pirate who openly defied the ruling sovereign, I’m afraid,” he said with a grin. “I learned my way around a galley. Come down to the ship, I’ll show you sometime.”

His tone was joking, but she smiled in return.

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” she said, and his head jerked around, trying to gauge whether she meant it or not. She was pretty sure she meant it.

“Listen, Swan,” he said seriously. “I wanted to talk to you. About what I said in Neverland – about you having to choose –”

“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” she said decisively. She stood and plucked her jacket from the coat stand by the door, turning to look at him. “I want to take a walk. You coming?”

“Of course,” he said. Swigging the last of his pint and signalling his thanks to Granny, he followed her out into the crisp October evening.

Though pleasant birthdays had been few and far between over the years, Emma had always loved having her birthday in the fall. The weather was the right shade of chilly; the trees erupted in a feast of reds and oranges; the air had a sharp, smokey tang that tickled her nose and made her think of hot chocolate and warm blankets. Fall in Maine, she had discovered since moving to Storybrooke, was like something out of a fairy tale. If you wanted to be cute about it.

She and Hook strolled down the street, heading vaguely toward the waterfront, walking just close enough to each other that their shoulders brushed ever-so-slightly with every few steps they took.

“So I gather birthdays are something of a momentous occasion in this realm,” Hook said after a few minutes.

“Sometimes. The ones that end in zero, at least,” she said.

“Is that why your lady mother was teasing you about your age? Does thirty have some significance?” he asked.

“I guess.” She laughed. “It’s sort of… symbolic. Of leaving youth and irresponsibility behind, usually. Some women freak out when they hit thirty, because they think they’re not young and hot anymore, or because they’re not married yet, or whatever. Why do you ask?” she said curiously. “Aren’t birthdays a big deal in your land?”

“Yes and no,” he said. “Most folk didn’t have the luxury of celebrating, or of worrying how many years they’d reached. To be honest, the poorest would have been glad to reach thirty. Harsh living claimed many a soul before they got that far.”

“I guess people like my parents have a pretty one-sided view of life in the Enchanted Forest.”

“Their perspectives are informed by the life they know, as are we all,” he said diplomatically. “If it helps, Swan, I think you look remarkably well for a decrepit woman of your years.”

Emma laughed and swatted him, and he chuckled. They walked on, a little closer than they had before.

“How old are you, anyway?” she asked after a minute. “You’ve never mentioned your age.”

“Probably because I don’t know for sure,” he said.

“Seriously? How can you not know how old you are?” she said in surprise.

“I was born in… less than advantageous circumstances,” he said. “My brother Liam raised me, mostly, and we were a bit preoccupied for birthdays. I was about seventeen when I joined the navy, I know. Three years in the service,” he counted on his fingers. “Then Liam died. Perhaps five or six years of piracy, then a few more with Milah. Lost her, lost my hand – time stopped having much meaning after that. Then I got stuck in Neverland, and I was there for a long time.”

“How long?” she asked softly.

“A very, very long time.” Hook paused. “As near as I can figure, it was about three hundred years.”

Emma sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Three hundred?” she said in disbelief.

“Aye. Not a period I like to dwell on,” he said.

“So that makes you… three hundred and thirty? Jesus,” she said.

“More, actually. I had to wait twenty eight years for Regina’s curse to be broken, just like everybody else.”

“Jesus,” she repeated. “Three hundred and sixty. That’s a hell of an age gap.”

“I don’t think I look a day over three hundred and forty,” he said. “I’m very well-preserved.”

She laughed. “Yeah, you look okay. For a fairy tale pirate who should’ve been pushing up daisies about three centuries ago.”

Emma expected a quip, some innuendo-laced remark about her appreciating the view, but he just smiled at her. She could have been imagining the soft, almost grateful look in his eyes.

They’d reached the docks. With a gentle touch on her elbow, Hook steered them over to a bench with a view of the harbor, and they sat for a long minute in the quiet. It was a clear night. Their breath steamed in front of them, and the stars were spectacular; they looked as if they were so close, you could reach out and pluck them from the sky.

“So, if you don’t know exactly how old you are, do you know when your birthday is?” Emma asked finally.

“No, I don’t. Sometime in the spring, I think. Beyond that, it’s another mystery, I’m afraid.” He sounded bitter, and it occurred to Emma that for someone who had lived so long, there were an awful lot of pieces of Killian Jones missing.

“You should pick one,” she said impulsively.

“Pick a birthday, love?” he said.

“Sure. I knew a few kids in the foster system who didn’t know their actual birth date, for whatever reason, and sometimes they got to decide when they wanted it to be,” she said. “You could choose your favorite time of year, or a particular date – something that feels right.”

“Is it important to have a birthday here?”

“Well, it’s nice. It’s a day that’s  _yours_ , you know – not a holiday or something, but just for you. And it gives people who care about you a chance to celebrate you.”

“Planning my party already, Swan? You know, if you care about me, I can think of several other ways you could demonstrate your affection…” He quirked an eyebrow at her.

Ah, there was the innuendo. She gave him a shove with her shoulder, and he laughed aloud.

“Go on, pick,” she said. “How about a day in the spring?”

Hook thought for a minute.

“What day did we sail for Neverland?” he asked finally. “When we left to get your lad back?”

“Late March… I guess it would have been around the twenty seventh.”

“March twenty seventh,” he said slowly, testing the words out. “Is that a good one?”

“Does it feel right?” she asked.

“That was the day I decided to be someone else,” he said. “I decided to live again. I believe that’s a good day to have as my birthday.”

“Well, there you go. March twenty seventh. I’ll put it on my calendar,” she said with a smile.

“Thank you, Emma,” he said, smiling back.

If she was trying not to get lost in the blue eyes of the man who’d just declared his birthday to be the day he had decided to help rescue her son, she wasn’t doing a very good job. In the moonlight they were pale, almost grey, and she could almost feel herself being tugged toward them, like water at high tide.

“I expect spaghetti,” he said suddenly.

She laughed again, tearing her gaze away from his and looking out across the harbor, where the  _Jolly Roger_  rocked slightly with the waves. She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets, half out of perplexity at the pull she felt, and half, she realized with a shiver, from the cold. Perhaps midnight in Maine’s late October was less like a fairy tale than she thought.

Hook must have noticed her shiver, for he unexpectedly rose from the bench. “I don’t know about you, Swan, but I’m freezing my well-preserved arse off out here,” he said. “Care to warm up aboard ship? I can offer you a nightcap before you go home.” He extended his good hand, and she removed her chilly fingers from her pocket and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.

“I don’t know, Hook,” she said as they walked down the dock. “Do you have anything besides rum?”

“As a matter of fact, my lady, I do.”

It wasn’t until he dropped her hand to open the hatch to his quarters that she realized he’d been holding it since they stood, and her fingers were no longer cold.

**Author's Note:**

> I did a bunch of Googling to figure out placements of dates and such, and this is as accurate as I could make it. However, I’m not sure where this fic would fit in the show’s timeline. I suppose it’d have to be before Pan’s curse, except we’re only in late March/early April in-show (as far as I can figure out), so there’s no way Emma’s birthday would fall between their return from Neverland and her losing her memories again. Plus, she’s turning 30, which means this is 2013, post-Pan’s-curse, although this is definitely pre-TLK-attempt Captain Swan. I don’t know why I think this is so important, except that I spent quite a while trying to figure it out.
> 
> PS: I referenced the excellent timelines found [here](http://www.dipity.com/missielissie/Once-Upon-a-Time/?s=t), [here](http://everythingonceuponatime.weebly.com/fairy-tale-land-timeline.html), and [here](http://forums.onceuponatimefansite.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1853), plus the OUAT [wiki](http://onceuponatime.wikia.com/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_Wiki).
> 
> PPS: I don’t like the title but I’m SO BAD AT TITLES.
> 
> PPPS: There might be a follow-up, I don't think this is over yet.


End file.
